Foreign cues and public views on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Abstract

As foreign sources in the news might help the public assess their home country’s foreign policies, scholars have recently turned attention to the effects of foreign source cues on domestic public opinion. Using original survey experiments, we explore the effects of domestic (United States) and foreign (Israeli, British, and Palestinian) criticism of Israel’s military actions and settlements on US attitudes towards the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. We find that foreign cues by government officials and non-governmental organisations have modest effects, and are generally not more influential than domestic cues. We also show that individuals might discount foreign criticism of Israel in the context of US bipartisan support for Israel. While our experiments reveal some heterogeneous effects related to partisanship, we are sceptical of significant movement in opinion in response to foreign cues. These findings provide insights into foreign source cue effects beyond the context of the use of military force.